Two More New Voyager Reviews

• There are another two Voyager reviews out for your reading pleasure today. Firstly, there's Julia Houston's take on 'Shattered', Wednesday's Voyager episode. The About.com Star Trek Guide thoroughly enjoyed the episode.

  For years, Beltran has been talking about how he doesn't read the whole script, just his own scenes. Interestingly, Chakotay's in every scene of this script, so I'm assuming Beltran had to read it all they way through. Is it a coincidence that what Chakotay learns here is a great appreciation for his own good fortune, for the nice things that have happened in his life, for the good things around him?

  I find it particularly interesting that when Chakotay is explaining to Janeway about the good things she's done, he doesn't mention that without Janeway's intervention, Chakotay, Torres, Tuvok and all the rest of the Maquis would have been stranded in the DQ all alone, with considerably less chance of getting home.

  Instead, he talks about the characters, about their growth, about their community. That's the point of this episode: even across time frames, even hardly knowing each other, even faced with chaos, even still Borg and Maquis, the crew comes together to keep the ship, fix the ship, and resume a course for home.

  To read her full tkae on the episode, please follow this link to About.com.

• Secondly, though it's not yet up at the site, Mania's Michelle Erica Green has posted her take on the episode. She seemed to have mixed feelings.

  I used to be a shameless Janeway/Chakotay fan, but for the past two years I really haven't cared because there hasn't been enough chemistry between them to raise an eyebrow about. "Shattered" doesn't just send them back to the first season chronologically; it sends them back to the days when Janeway used to check out Chakotay's butt when she was walking behind him and vice versa. She trusts him implicitly almost from the start, which would seem unrealistic if we hadn't seen her do exactly the same thing in "Caretaker." She doesn't question her decision to make him her first officer even when she questions the choices that landed the crew in the Delta Quadrant. And when Chakotay gives her the speech about how the crew has become family, for once it actually rings true -- we've seen it, with Icheb and Naomi, with Paris and Torres, with Tuvok and Janeway. Usually Chakotay gets left out of the equation because she treats him with such disdain. Not this time.

  Of course it's delightful to see Seska and Chaotica again, to hear talk of helmsman Stadi, to watch the Doctor roll his eyes at the mention of anomalies. I wish they'd gotten in some mention of Kes, though that wouldn't have meant much to pre-launch Janeway. It doesn't really matter. I will remember only the J/C scenes. They way he keeps using his body to block her path, as she did to him in "Caretaker," posturing aggression, getting much too close together for that to be the only thing they're feeling. The look on her face when she realizes she loaned to Chakotay her treasured copy of Dante's Inferno, given to her by her fiancé. The uncertainty in the turbolift about whether she wants to know anything -- professional or personal -- about their future. The decision in engineering that she does want to know their fate as a couple, Temporal Prime Directive be damned. Her vague disappointment when she can offer only a handshake after he says there are barriers they never cross.

  Again, to read Michelle's full review, follow this link.

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